


Our Last Days as Children

by Maidenjedi



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt Saracen does the hardest thing a grandson ever has to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Last Days as Children

**Author's Note:**

  * For [do_not_confess](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=do_not_confess).



> The title is from an Explosions in the Sky song that was featured on the "Friday Night Lights" film soundtrack. Written for do_not_confess, Yuletide 2008.

The day Matt Saracen put his grandmother in a home was a rainy, chilly Saturday in January. Dillon was generally dry and cold, with the kind of wind that cut to your bones because there was nothing stopping it as it came off the Rockies into the panhandle of Texas. But they had their share of freak weather, and that January day was a doozy. So it was that Matt could say it was rain on his face that made his cheeks wet, and the cold that made him shiver and rub his forearms.

The Joseph Robert Garrity Retirement Center is really the only choice Matt had; like so much in Dillon, it owed it's name and relative prosperity to the Garrity family, but also like so much in Dillon, it wasn't the kind of place you really wanted to leave your ailing grandmother. Shelby (Matt still couldn't call her "Mom") offered to take Lorraine to Oklahoma, but Matt couldn't imagine his grandmother anywhere but Dillon. She wouldn't like being someplace else, even if she never appeared aware of it.

"Mr. Saracen, as you are your grandmother's guardian, there are certain papers you will need to sign, and procedures you need to be made aware of. As soon as your grandmother is settled in, you'll need to come to my office."

Matt didn't much like the guy who ran the center, whose name was Bill or Will or maybe Rich; he was soft-spoken, which made him sound like he was in a funeral home, and condescending, which made him seem like he had some kind of secret knowledge about life that he wasn't willing to share. Matt just nodded at Bill-Will-Rich-or-was-it-Dick and put his hands around the handles on his grandmother's wheelchair. As he started pushing, he resisted the urge to shout her name, to tell the world this woman is still Lorraine Saracen, that she is alive. He refrained, settling for turning his head and not quite looking that man in the face, and saying just loud enough so he could hear, "Her name is Lorraine."

Shelby stared the guy down, her patented glare making him back down just a bit and say to Matt, "Yes, Lorraine." She and Matt walked down to room 14 (the fourth room on the first floor), Lorraine quiet in her chair. She sniffed loudly from time to time, her only form of protest; she'd thrown a right holy fit that morning at home, but eventually she'd given up, Matt's soothing and cajoling having a rare effect on her temper. Even in her illness, Lorraine knew the score.

"Here we are!" Shelby said in a slightly sing-song voice, her forced cheerfulness breaking through no cloud, warming no wet feet. Her hair was damp and falling a bit in her face, and her attempt at a smile waned as she glanced about the room. Matt watched her, glad for her presence even though it offered no comfort, and took his cue from the quick pleading glance she threw at him.

"Grandma, look at this quilt, it's just like one you have at home. And they've got a TV, Grandma, do you want me to turn it on? Maybe they have cable."

Lorraine shook her head, tears beginning to fall, and Matt and Shelby took her arms and helped her out of the chair and into the faded chintz armchair in the corner by the window. The room, like Shelby's attempts at being a ray of sunshine, was forced into a lukewarm imitation of comfort for the aging. But all the chintz and pale pink linen couldn't hide the oxygen tank near the bed, or the fact that the bed was on wheels; there was a panic button on the nightstand. In the half-closed closet near the door, there was a portable heart rate monitor.

Shelby unpacked Lorraine's personal items (she wasn't allowed many) and Matt arranged the pictures they'd brought to cheer up the room. It didn't take long, and Matt tried to stretch it out, make his time in this room last so he wouldn't have to go sign his grandmother's DNR or talk about her medications with someone who would never know or care that she hated oatmeal and liked Oprah in the afternoons.

Finally, though, he had to go, just to get it over with. The Saracen men, Shelby thought, looked upon all duties as unpleasant, swallowing them like sick children faced with liquid cough syrup. And that's what Matt's face looked like - a child's petulant, defiant acquiesence to cruel and unusual punishment. Shelby stayed with Lorraine, and Matt walked down the hall with his eyes carefully trained on the patterned linoleum floor.

"Sign here." "Do you know what her wishes are concerning...." "Please sign this, and I need your social security number here." "I'll just make a copy of this; we already have your papers concerning your emancipation; and here, please."

As Matt signed the last necessary paper, concerning payment for his grandmother's stay at the J.R. Garrity Retirement Center, he stared at his signature, thinking suddenly of Julie. She was always teasing him about his signature - "So messy, just like a guy" - and saying he needed to work on it so he could sign his art or game-balls from the future Super Bowls he'd be winning. Matt didn't really care to think about those things, about the future in such grandiose terms, but he did like thinking about Julie and her soft kisses, her arms around his waist, her way of talking about things like there was actually life outside of Dillon, Texas and Panther football.

"Mr. Saracen."

Rick or Dick or Slick Willy, whatever, had taken to talking in a tone of slight impatience, and Matt realized his mind had wandered and he hadn't really been listening.

"I'm sorry, sir, what?"

"I said, we're finished here. I want to remind you that we allow visitors during daylight hours only. You and your...you will need to consider restricting your visits so that your grandmother does not become dependent upon you. You will need to consider her health above all other concerns. For now, anyone may visit that she recognizes. But we may need to consider restricting visits to just those from yourself and your..."

"She's my mom. Her name is Shelby."

"Yes. But we can discuss that another time. We thank you for considering the Garrity Retirement Center," he then pulled out a business card from a drawer in his desk, "and if you need anything, please don't hesitate."

It occured to Matt to wonder what made someone go into this line of work; it had to be more depressing even than working in a funeral home would be, watching people's loved ones deteriorate and fade away. This guy (his card read "Richard Williamson"), on closer inspection, seemed simply tired and kind of sad, aware of his role as caretaker to the dying. Matt didn't want to dwell on it or him, and so left with a quick handshake.

He walked into Room 14 and found Lorraine trying not to laugh at something, her hands covering her face. Shelby was actually laughing, and they were both looking at someone.

There stood Julie Taylor, in the middle of the tale of the state championship game and Matt's spectacular fumble that somehow the refs hadn't caught and had ended in a touchdown for Dillon. She was embellishing, of course, her hands waving and her voice rising and falling in imitation of Matt's surprise at the hit.

Matt's heart pounded. He hadn't expected her; in fact, he'd tried to ask her not to come at all, and had to resort to his usual half-sentences and furrowed-brow-pleading with her as she loudly and repeatedly insisted (looking like her mother but sounding so much like Coach that Matt was more than a little afraid for a moment). Now that he thought about it, he knew he hadn't won that argument, if it had even been an argument, and he should have known Julie would come. All glitter and light, like the west Texas moon on the rise.

The three women turned their heads in unison as Matt's laugh overcame their own. He didn't even know why he was laughing, really, because frankly he was still sore from that hit at state and Julie's retelling of it didn't help, and he was struggling with being sad, because this wasn't supposed to be a joyful or happy day at all. His grandmother, the woman who'd raised him, was beyond his care and his help and she was in this horrible pink chintz room and the linoleum was patterned and she always swore about how ugly patterned linoleum was. He couldn't even do right by her now, at what was very likely the end. And he was laughing!

Shelby busied herself with Lorraine's dresser, Lorraine focused on something outside the window, and Julie came towards Matt. Because while he had started by laughing, he was crying now. Great big unmanly gasps for air between sobs. And Grandma and Mom recognized he needed a woman to comfort him, but that he was long beyond their help now.

Julie put her hands on his face, kissed his nose. She wiped the tears as they came and his head dropped on her shoulder. His arms came up around her and squeezed, and she held him in return as the tears began to taper off.

When he lifted his head, he sniffed and wiped his arm across his nose, and Julie laughed a little at him. "I think you got some on me, too."

He offered a slightly watery grin and walked over to the nightstand for Kleenex. "Here," he said, wiping Julie's shoulder.

"Julie brought over some more of my things, Matthew. And a present for me!" Lorraine was giddy, a note in her voice offering hope that it wouldn't be so bad, living here, if only people treated her like a princess in a tower and not an invalid forgotten in a dank basement.

Julie opened a bag on the floor that sure enough, contained some things from the Saracen house that the family, such as it was, left behind. A framed picture of Matt in a Peewee football uniform. A collage of clippings from the Dillon paper featuring Matt. A picture of his father in uniform. Some doilies and little trinkets that not even the gatekeepers of this purgatory could keep out of Lorraine Saracen's room. While Julie pulled these things out, Lorraine opened the pink gift bag, Matt's presence giving her permission to open it at last.

Inside was a crookedly-knit yellow blanket, just big enough for a beloved grandmother's lap. Julie smiled shyly as Lorraine exclaimed over it, and Shelby came over and gave Julie a quick squeeze. "Did you do it yourself, Julie?" she asked.

"Yeah, mostly. Mom helped with the edges. There's a card from her and Dad in the bag, too."

Lorraine asked Matt to read it to her. "To a great lady, as she enters the next stage of life. We are praying for you, Lorraine! Coach and Tami Taylor, and Jules and Gracie Belle too."

The blanket took up residence on Lorraine's lap, where it was seldom absent from that day forward. The card went on the nightstand. Lorraine was yawning and beginning to get cranky, and as if bidden a nurse came by to say hello and introduce herself as the evening shift nurse. "I'm Lola, if you need anything let me know," and she stayed in the room as Matt and Julie and Shelby left. Lorraine looked ready to cry, but she was calm.

Matt felt tears ready to come again, but now he was able to buck up and suck up, as his dad might have said. Shelby asked if Julie could take Matt home, as she had some errands to run, and that was of course code for Matt and Julie to have some time alone and not worry about Shelby, and for Julie to take care of Matt if he needed it. But women read these codes and men do not, so Matt was never aware of the conspiracy to watch over him.

The rain had stopped and the clouds broke just enough to give a peek of the brilliant west Texas sunset that Dillon residents took for granted in the long hot summers and pined for in the unpredictable winters. Julie had borrowed her dad's truck, and she drove with no purpose, waiting for Matt to decide if he was hungry or tired or if he wanted to park and let her kiss him and touch him until he didn't think anymore. Matt himself was aware of nothing but the twang of another Jason Boland song on the radio, and Julie's soft, feminine smell.

"Do you think it's gonna be this hard forever?" He said this with no preamble, after a half hour of driving around Dillon and Julie finally pulling into the high school parking lot near the football field.

"I don't know," she said, sighing a little. "Probably." She was at a loss for words. So much was happening, with Mrs. Saracen in a home and Matt thinking seriously about college, and high school ending for all of Julie's friends and not for Julie herself. She was a Panther for another year, and Matt's mind had already stopped operating in Panther mode, if it ever really had.

"I love her, you know, and this sucks. This just...sucks." He couldn't be anymore articulate about this than he was about everyday things, and this was perhaps the biggest thing in his life to date.

"I know." Julie took his hand, and they sat in the truck with the radio on for another half an hour, facing the Dillon High School football field and the dark and blank scoreboard. It seemed to mean something, as the last of the light faded and they were left staring out the window at nothing much at all, with only each other for company.


End file.
